Blog Post

Digital Media’s Slowest Revenue Quarter Ever

Strategy Analytics has done a nice and simple comparison of revenues from a selected group of online media/Internet companies in Q208 (what it calls its “Digital Media Index”), and shows that revenue growth for these companies slowed to 0.8 percent quarter-on-quarter in Q208, down from 3.3 percent in the previous quarter and 3.4 percent in the same period last year. Google (NSDQ: GOOG), up 3.5 percent quarter-on-quarter, was the only one of the five largest companies that went against the general trend.

Some other conclusions:
— Fox Interactive Media (NYSE: NWS) was the fastest growing digital media company, with 55.6 percent growth in the last 12 months
— Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) iTunes was down 7.0 percent quarter-on-quarter. However this decline is consistent with seasonality for iTunes, and is in line with a 6.9 percent drop in the same period the previous year.

The conclusion: “It seems that not even an emerging sector such as digital media is immune to the global economic downturn.” Oh wait, we were part of the economy? Who knew…

4 Responses to “Digital Media’s Slowest Revenue Quarter Ever”

Mark made a good point here, which applies especially to apple. By the way its great to see Rafat Ali, Editor of such a great website paidcontent.org actually reads & responds to comments made by visitors…!

I think this is all a little misleading. Q2 is typically a slow quarter for a number of these companies – Apple for example enjoys Q4/Q1 spikes for digital media because of hardware purchases over the holiday season, and mini spikes around product launches. Given the focus has been around non-music services as well recently, to quote just the digital media spend is off the mark.

with respect, I think Strat An need to go back to the drawing board, or rethink some of the garbage they put out.

You are just mentioning 2 quarters and telling that industry is slowing down but of you consider on an annual Trailing Twelve Months(TTM) basis, Digital Media Index grew 31.1% with four digital media companies beating the index; Fox Interactive Media with 55.6% growth, Google with 46.0%, WMG Digital with 38.5% and Apple iTunes with 32.5% annual TTM growth.